1. LWOW 2016
Product management –
what makes or breaks a
startup
Anna Ronkainen 2016-01-17
Chief Scientist*, TrademarkNow
@ronkaine
*+co-founder,formerheadofproduct

2. What is product
management?

5. Product management = figuring out...
- what the product is and what it is for
- who the product is for
- the competitive landscape
- what goes and doesn’t go into the product
- evaluating the product to make sure it does
what it is supposed to (and users love it)
- what to do and when (“product roadmap”)
- how to build it (with development/mfg)
- how to sell it (with marketing and sales)

6. 90% of product management
work can be automated...

7. Our latest product management hire
can handle all this:
“Can we get feature x?”
“But y would buy our
product if we had
feature x!”
“Our competitor z has
feature x!”

8. ...but it’s the 10% (that you
actually decide to do) that
makes or breaks a company

9. So, how to do it
?

10. 1. Be your own customer:
build products for yourself

11. For aspiring legal
entrepreneurs,
it can make a lot of
sense to first get a
“normal” legal job to
figure out where the
pain points are...

12. 2. Become your own customer:
listen, learn, empathize

13. Listen to your customers, but remember
that they don’t have (all) the answers!
“If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said
faster horses.”
– commonly attributed to Henry Ford
(possibly apocryphal)

14. Remember what your actual product is

15. Start small:
Minimum viable cake

16. Final words of advice
- find a specific problem worth addressing
- figure out who your customer is (maybe
even sketch a user persona or two?)
- get out of the building!
- validate your assumptions!
- believe in your product...
- ...but don’t be afraid to change course if it
turns out you’re on the wrong path

17. Thank you!